Saturday, June 30, 2018



The Thinking Tree - an ancient olive tree in Puglia, Italy
Trees might be among our lushest metaphors and sensemaking frameworks for knowledge precisely because the richness of what they say is more than metaphorical — they speak a sophisticated silent language, communicating complex information via smell, taste, and electrical impulses. This fascinating secret world of signals is what German forester Peter Wohlleben explores in The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate



And this is how they make you feel!

My daughter Kersti in pink and Nicky, one of her very close friends. Strolling in the woods.


And with a little ingenuity this is how you can help them grow:


An ancient civilization that pioneered irrigation & agricultural techniques.

"Persian agriculture relied heavily on the irrigation systems: Qanats and Canals. In the early part of the 1st Millennium BC, the Persians started constructing elaborate tunnel systems called qanats for extracting groundwater/artesian water in the dry mountain basins of present day Iran."

Amazing Historic Persian Garden in the middle of Desert. Kerman, Iran
www.ancient-origins.net


Here’s a really controversial theory that may or may not be a bit “wacky” but it is at least an interesting conjecture – it’s worth reading. It's more about timing than origin.

 
Aboriginal Australian archaeology findings prompt rethinking of the “Out of Africa” theory  

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/01/20/aboriginal-australian-archaeology/ 

Three interesting stories: 

In the early 1920s, 23-year-old Inuit woman named  Blackjack endured a two-year stay on frosty Wrangel Island. 


               https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ada-blackjack-arctic-survivor


Doris Miller wearing the Navy Cross medal, having just been awarded from Admiral Chester Nimitz, onboard carrier Enterprise, Pearl Harbor, US Territory of Hawaii, 27 May 1942. If you haven't read about him, well, now you can.



Members of Mexico's 201st Air Fighter Squadron "Aztec Eagles" and a P-47 Thunderbolt during the Philippines Campaign in 1945.

 Bet you never heard about these guys either.  


So much to learn, eh?



Astronomy time



Latest photo of the planet Venus with the Hubble telescope (worth every penny)


 Venus w/o it's sulfuric acid cloud layer.


NASA's New Horizons probe - the same one that gave us stunning photos of Pluto- has just woken up, approximately 6 billion kilometres (3.7 billion miles) from home. 


It's currently flying through the Kuiper Belt, and off on an exciting mission scheduled for New Year's Day – the first-ever flyby of the Kuiper Belt object nicknamed Ultima Thule.
http://www.sci-techuniverse.com/2018/06/a-nasa-probe-just-woke-up-6-billion.html



Scientists working with telescopes at the European Southern Observatory and NASA announced a remarkable new discovery: An entire system of Earth-sized planets. 



If that’s not enough, the team asserts that the density measurements of the planets indicates that the six innermost are Earth-like rocky worlds.



And that’s just the beginning.



The Apophis asteroid – the Egyptian God of death and darkness – is the size of the rose bowl. 



On Friday the 13th, April 2029, Apophis “will come close enough to earth to dip below our orbiting communication satellites…it will be the biggest, closest thing ever to come to Earth in our recorded history,” he says, “now the uncertainty in that orbit includes the keyhole – a narrow region within these uncertainties…”



And NASA’s Big Announcement is: Ancient Organic Molecules Found on Mars!
In the first paper, the authors indicate how Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite detected traces of methane in drill samples it took from Martian rocks. Once these rocks were heated, they released an array of organics and volatiles similar to how organic-rich sedimentary rocks do on Earth. On Earth, such deposits are indications of fossilized organic life, which may or may not be the case with the samples examined by Curiosity.



However, this evidence is bolstered by the fact that Curiosity has also found evidence that the Gale Crater was once an ancient lakebed. In addition to water, this lakebed contained all the chemical building blocks and energy sources that are necessary for life. Next story






Some cool animal stuff:



                                 From my talented friend Anne in Canada.

                           Scientists See Promise in Resurrecting These Rhinos That Are Nearly Extinct.

Even if the technology can bring back the northern white rhinoceros, should we do it?




                                          Intensity in the eye of the hunter


Always one of my favorite critters
I have had the pleasure of swimming with the three largest critters here.
                                                                      Pissed wolves



                                                                Blue pit viper



The back of an adult male gharial provides babies with both protection and a convenient place to bask in the sun. A closer look from the banks of the Chambal River, the critically endangered species’ last remaining stronghold: 

Creaturely Migrations on a Breathing Planet

by David Abram

Through his observations of cranes, butterflies, and salmon in the course of their annual migrations, cultural ecologist and philosopher David Abram reflects on the deep intelligence that lies at the heart of migration patterns. 






Lets not piss off Mother Nature, OK?



Lightnings and volcanoes blending looks crazy, Chile






A little anthropology:

An Ancient City Emerges in a Remote Rain Forest.

The revelation of an ancient city in a valley in the Mosquitia mountains, of Honduras, one of the last scientifically unexplored regions on Earth, was a different story. This was the first time a large archaeological site had been discovered in a purely speculative search using a technology called LIDAR, or “light detection and ranging,” which can map terrain through the thickest jungle foliage, an event I chronicled in a story for the magazine in 2013. As a result, this discovery revealed something vanishingly rare: a city in an absolutely intact, undisturbed, pristine state, buried in a rain forest so remote and untouched that the animals there appeared never to have seen people before. There is a full video here so you might want to see it.








The stairs in the Palace of Knossos.
www.ancient-origins.net








A grave in southwest Russia dating to the 5th century B.C. has yielded an ancient bronze Corinthian helmet, the first Greek helmet of its kind to be found north of the Black Sea in the Greek Kingdom of the Bosporus, researchers say.



                                 I've always been fascinated by Egyptian jewelry.

                              Island of Aogoshima, Japan. Yes, people live there.



Some Science stuff:
 One of the best-known regions of the brain, the cerebellum, accounts for just 10 percent of the organ's total volume, but contains more than 50 percent of its neurons.
Despite all that processing power, it's been assumed that the cerebellum functions largely outside the realm of conscious awareness, instead coordinating physical activities like standing and breathing.



But last year neuroscientists discovered that it plays an important role in the reward response - one of the main drives that motivate and shape human behaviour.

https://www.sciencealert.com/cerebellum-human-brain-neuroscience-discover-new-role-behaviour-reward-response?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Branded+Content&utm_campaign=ScienceNaturePageSign


Scientists Find Fractal Patterns & Golden Ratio Pulses in Stars





Plato had theorized that the Universe as a whole is simply a resonance of the “Music or Harmony of the Spheres.” This new study may provide deeper insights to pairing the Philosophies & Spiritual Sciences offered throughout the ages with modern Astronomy, and how we may understand the underlying elegance of nature as a whole.

https://www.qwaym.com/scientists-find-fractal-patterns-golden-ratio-pulses-stars/





Oh, to be 67 years old again!